Stop Calling People Weeds When Christ Taught You to See Treasure

There is something we have to settle before we read the parables of Jesus:

Not every “you” in the Bible is you.

Jesus was speaking to real people, in a real covenant world, at a very specific moment in redemptive history.

Matthew 13 is no exception.

These people were living through something you and I will never experience. They were standing in the overlap of two covenant worlds. The old covenant—the ministry of death written and engraved on stones—was growing old and ready to vanish away, while the new covenant in Christ was being revealed and established.

They were living in the transition.

We are not.

That matters, because when we ignore audience relevance, we take passages describing their covenant transition and turn them into weapons against people living nearly two thousand years after the story was fulfilled.

Nowhere is that more obvious than Matthew 13.

The Wheat and Tares Were Not About Your Neighbors

Jesus tells the story of a field containing both wheat and tares.

Later, He explains it to His disciples:

“The field is the world.”
—Matthew 13:38

The Son of Man had sown good seed, but another kind of seed was growing alongside it. Both would remain until the harvest at the end of the age.

For generations, Christians have been taught to look around the world and apply these categories to people today.

We are the wheat. They are the tares.

We are the sheep. They are the goats.

We are the good fish. They are the bad fish.

But Jesus was not describing Christianity in 2026.

He was describing their covenant world.

Within Israel, a separation was taking place. There were those receiving Christ and coming out from the Mosaic order into the life of the new covenant, and there were those rejecting Him and remaining identified with the law, temple, priesthood, sacrifices, and the covenant that was passing away.

Paul describes the same reality through the language of a remnant.

These weren't two groups that would continue running alongside each other for thousands of years.

They belonged to the covenant transition.

The harvest belonged to the end of their age.

That is why Matthew 13 must be allowed to remain in Matthew 13 before we drag it into our world.

One Kingdom Story

The parables surrounding the wheat and tares aren't disconnected Sunday-school lessons.

They belong together.

Jesus gives us the sower.

The wheat and tares.

The mustard seed.

The leaven.

The hidden treasure.

The pearl of great price.

And the dragnet containing good and bad fish.

Jesus is showing His disciples the kingdom from different angles.

Something was being planted.

Something was growing.

Something hidden was being revealed.

Something valuable was being recovered.

Something was being gathered.

And a separation was approaching as their age came to its appointed end.

Once we see that larger story, the treasure hidden in the field becomes incredibly beautiful.

The Treasure in the Field

Jesus says:

“The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field.”

Remember, Jesus has already told us what the field represents:

The field is the world.

A man discovers treasure within that field. He recognizes its value, gives everything, and purchases the field.

Then Jesus immediately tells another parable about a merchant searching for beautiful pearls. When the merchant finds one pearl of extraordinary value, he sells everything and buys it.

We have commonly been taught to place ourselves in the role of the merchant.

We are searching for God.

Jesus is the treasure.

Jesus is the pearl.

And once we discover how valuable He is, we must surrender everything in order to obtain Him.

But that reading loses sight of the movement already taking place throughout Matthew 13.

Christ is the one acting in the field.

He is the sower.

He is gathering His people.

He is the one who said He came to seek and save that which was lost.

The direction matters.

The gospel is not fundamentally the story of humanity searching desperately until we finally discover God.

It is the story of God faithfully coming after what belongs to Him.

The Merchant Knows What He Is Looking At

This is where the parable becomes breathtaking.

A merchant understands value.

He knows what something is worth.

Other people can walk past something without recognizing what they are looking at, but the merchant sees differently.

And when he finds that pearl, he considers it worth everything.

This fits beautifully within the covenant story Jesus was telling.

Christ came for the lost sheep of the house of Israel. He came to gather the covenant remnant out of the world that was passing away and bring them into Himself.

They were His treasure.

They were being gathered into the body of Christ.

But Israel was never the end of the story.

The Treasure Was in the Field, but He Bought the Field

God had made a promise to Abraham long before Moses.

Through Abraham's Seed, all the families of the earth would be blessed.

Christ came to fulfill Israel's covenant story, but Israel's restoration served something much larger.

The promise was always moving toward the nations.

Toward the world.

That makes one detail in Jesus' parable incredibly important.

The man finds treasure in the field.

But he doesn't simply remove the treasure.

He purchases the field.

And Jesus had already told His disciples:

The field is the world.

The faithful remnant was being gathered into Christ so that God's covenant promises could reach their intended fulfillment. Through Abraham's one Seed, blessing would extend beyond the boundaries of Israel to the whole world.

The treasure mattered.

But so did the field.

We Are Not Living Before the Harvest

This is where audience relevance protects us from turning Scripture into a weapon.

We are nearly two thousand years removed from the covenant transition Jesus was describing.

We are not standing between Moses and Christ.

We are not waiting for the old covenant to disappear.

We are not waiting for the end of that age.

We are not living before their harvest.

We live on the fulfilled side of the story.

So Christians today have no business looking across the street at another human being and declaring:

I'm wheat. You're a tare.

I'm a sheep. You're a goat.

I'm the good fish. You're the bad fish.

Those categories belonged to a covenant separation taking place within their world as that age approached its end.

The irony is that we have taken passages describing Christ bringing an old covenant world of separation, condemnation, and death to its appointed conclusion and used them to create new systems of separation, condemnation, and death.

That completely misses the story.

They lived through the separation.

Christ accomplished the gathering.

The age ended.

The covenant reached its fulfillment.

And we inherited the kingdom on the other side.

Stop Looking for Weeds

Maybe the greatest tragedy of our traditional reading is what it has trained us to see when we look at other people.

We have become experts at identifying weeds.

Saved and lost.

In and out.

Chosen and rejected.

Wheat and tares.

Sheep and goats.

But the Merchant looked at His treasure and saw something worth everything.

The treasure didn't become valuable because it performed correctly.

It wasn't valuable because it understood its own worth.

It wasn't valuable because it had perfect theology.

It was valuable because the Merchant knew its value.

That is Beloved Identity.

Our identity doesn't begin with our ability to find God.

It begins with discovering that we were never lost from His sight.

Christ sought what was lost.

He gathered His covenant people.

He fulfilled the promises.

He brought the old age to its appointed end.

Through Abraham's Seed, the blessing opened to the nations.

And the covenant story moved toward Paul's magnificent conclusion:

God all in all.

So perhaps it is time to stop standing in a field looking for people we can call tares.

That harvest isn't ours.

That age isn't ours.

That separation isn't ours.

We live on the other side of fulfillment.

And from here, the invitation isn't to search humanity for weeds.

It is to learn to see humanity through the eyes of the Merchant.

Stop calling people weeds when Christ taught you to see treasure.